The Ears of a Cat

by Roderick Hart

  ‘If I may say so, Fräulein Grönefeld, you fail to understand the criminal mentality. Criminals are lazy; they always choose the shortest path. Do you really believe that terrorists would travel all the way out here to Parndorf when they could hole up in Vienna with beer and cake and target an establishment closer to hand?’

  Grönefeld considered replying to this. The business park at Parndorf made great play of its transport links, including the motorway to Budapest and the rail link to Bratislava. Once they had what they wanted, terrorists had several ways to escape. But Pienaar wasn’t finished.

  ‘And another thing, Fräulein Grönefeld, let us suppose that terrorists gained entry to this facility, how would they know what to take? They would lack the required specialist knowledge. Surely you can see that?’

  Grönefeld was astonished by the ease with which this man, for many years a banquets manager at the Hyatt Regency, Johannesburg, swept major issues under the carpet. Terrorists might not know what to take when they entered, but they would soon find out by taping employees to their chairs and asking them heavy questions with craft knives and long-nosed pliers. And in the two years she’d worked at Breakout, she had yet to see a single member of the security team armed with a peashooter, let alone a handgun or automatic weapon. On the strength of this meeting alone, she knew she would make further contact with Catherine Cooper. Not that she said so to Pienaar.

  ‘The fact remains that some of the viruses we’re creating here are potentially lethal, and all the more so till we come up with viable vaccines. Which, Herr Pienaar, we have yet to do.’

  Pienaar stared at her across his desk; the way things were going he’d have to let this woman go. The departure of the UK from the European Union would provide the opportunity he needed; plans were already advanced to transfer staff from their research facility in Slough to locations in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

  ‘You are a pleasant enough person, Fräulein Grönefeld, and a valued member of our team when you confine yourself to your work, but now you are straying too far.’

  ‘And how can you possibly demonstrate that?’

  ‘You have met our head of security?’

  ‘Only in passing, a nodding acquaintance, so to say.’

  ‘I see. Well, you may not be aware that Gunther Dietmayer has moved in security circles for over twenty years. In his time, he has been seconded to NATO HQ in Brussels, a rare distinction, and he came to us, highly recommended, straight from the upper echelons of the BVD here in Austria.’

  And now it all became clear; the confidential nature of her meeting with the BVD had been compromised from the start.

  ‘I have to assure you that on this point, Fräulein Grönefeld, the bases are covered. For obvious reasons, I can’t go into detail, but Herr Dietmayer has established a robust security protocol in this building. Even terrorists of the type you describe wouldn’t make it through the atrium to the labs beyond. They wouldn’t stand a chance.’

  When Grönefeld left his office, Pienaar opened her file. There was more in it than there should have been, including background notes on her current boyfriend. Klaus Wendling was seven years older than she was and had a son by a previous partner. Since he hadn’t married either woman, he clearly wasn’t stupid, but neither Grönefeld nor Wendling showed any sign of political activity, which was reassuring. Currently employed as a lab technician, the man was an avid windsurfer, a pointless pastime in Pienaar’s opinion. The file included a picture of Wendling taken from his Facebook page and another of his rear windscreen showing a windsurfer sailing into the sun and below it the dubious legend Windsurfers do it Standing Up.

  12

  There are times when very little happens. For Catherine Cooper, the last two weeks of 2016 was such a time. Her father, Dr Friedrich Weber, multispectral imaging expert and serial philanderer, made several attempts to meet her, all of which she rebuffed. His expertise made him a useful member of the team at mission control, but rather than launching environmental monitoring satellites, he might have been better employed looking closer to home where, due to malfunctions in the sex drive, the atmosphere had gone from healthy to toxic in a few short years. Fending him off with one hand, Cooper steered a course with the other to her mother’s new home on the south coast of England, the place where she had grown up and, Cooper suspected, had gone home to die in the sense that she did not intend to leave it.

  For three weeks, her schedule left her free to travel, but Schnucki was another matter. When strangers invaded his space, he disappeared under the bed, only coming out for food when his sharp little ears assured him the coast was clear. But leaving the apartment was something else again, and that tied Cooper down. She’d tried a boarding cattery, an experience he survived at the expense of his weight. Excellent though the cattery was, Schnucki took against it from the start. Perhaps his nose was overwhelmed by the presence of other cats; perhaps he felt abandoned, unloved, uncared for. Whatever the reason, he stopped eating – even catnip left him unmoved – and Cooper had to return from a hiking holiday in the Carpathians several days early. Before he wasted away, as she explained in a message to Hjemdahl and Horváth, who always liked to know where she was. Oh dear, poor Schnucki, she replied. Hjemdahl was less sympathetic. If he wants to starve, his choice.

  The solution proved to be Trudi Kirsch, a woman who not only understood animals but even some of their owners. Trudi’s Tierbetreuung catered for dogs but majored on cats. She would take on a client only after thorough vetting of its home and the animal itself, including all necessary vaccination records. Cooper found their first meeting hard going: Kirsch’s hair was short but her checklist long. She noted every reply in a notebook with a picture of a cat on the front, asking supplementary questions as the need arose.

  Then events took a surprising turn. Schucki ambled in from the balcony to check out the new arrival, a rare occurrence and, in its way, a silent seal of approval. And when he let her scratch him behind the ear, the deal was done. Kirsch would visit Schucki every day and update his owner with regular emails, including photographic attachments. She also offered a webcam option; Cooper could check in on Schnucki at any time of the day or night. She was shocked to hear this but hid it well and fired off an email to Gina Saito the minute Kirsch left, asking how such a thing was possible. If Schnucki could be spied on in her apartment, surely so could she?

  And so she travelled from Berlin to London by rail and took a coach from Victoria Coach Station all the way to her mother’s hometown of Charmouth, a journey just shy of seven hours. She could have crossed the Atlantic in that time, against a headwind, though aviation fuel doing the damage it did, she wouldn’t have wanted to. The walk to her mother’s house was longer than she’d have liked, but the wheels on her suitcase took most of the strain and her mother was pleased to see her. She had a casserole on, though she didn’t say what was in it. Knowing her mother, it would largely consist of root vegetables.

  Eleanor Cooper had rented a house on Lower Sea Lane, unusual in having verandas giving to the road on both floors. Since leaving her husband, she couldn’t afford to buy a place of her own. Their apartment in Darmstadt had been rented and wasn’t theirs to sell, though that hadn’t put Weber off trying.

  ‘Ah well, Catherine dear, that’s just the way it goes,’ she said with a sigh at the time.

  And she’d sighed for them both, a mother and daughter whose marriages had failed.

  ‘Maybe it’s genetic,’ she said, ‘maybe I passed it on to you.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s how it works, Mother.’

  Neither did Eleanor, though she had a more immediate concern.

  ‘About the bath.’

  Eleanor knew that after her journey, her daughter would long to lie back in warm water and luxuriate in suds.

  ‘If I could just show you.’

  Despite numerous attempts to clean it with a range of proprietary pr
oducts, the rust marks wouldn’t wash off; she was embarrassed that her only child should have to stretch herself out in an old tub like that.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Mother, there’s nothing to worry about.’

  And that was probably true, though after lying back for a while, studying her toes and thinking her thoughts, she began to wonder about her skin. Was that prickly sensation entirely in her head or was she being attacked by residues of the many cleaning products her mother had used? What were the “miracle microparticles” in Double Plus Bathroom Cleaner getting up to right now? And maybe, since her mother had tried a range of cleaners, ingredients of several, harmless in themselves, had combined to form a corrosive flesh-eating mix, the chemical equivalent of necrotising fasciitis. To her annoyance, this thought wouldn’t leave her alone, and so she emerged from the bathroom sooner than her mother expected, clad in a large turquoise bath towel, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the vinyl flooring of the corridor outside. Her mother heard her and shouted upstairs, in her mind pictures of rust marks disfiguring Catherine’s skin.

  ‘Everything all right, dear, you weren’t in there long?’

  ‘I’m fine, Mother, really.’

  The bedroom was spare in more ways than one, and at this season of the year it was cold as well, despite the small fan heater her mother had provided. As she passed her mother’s room, she looked in. Apart from the expected double bed, she noticed a dressing table, complete with little stool and tilting mirror. Functional they may have been, matching they were not. Seen under the glare of the overhead light, as yet without a shade, they looked as second-hand as they probably were. The house had been rented unfurnished and money was tight. The ever-thoughtful Dr Weber had offered his wife much of the furniture from their Darmstadt home, including any items originally chosen by her “regardless of who may have paid for them”, provided she covered the shipping, which he knew she couldn’t afford.

  The table was covered by a large collection of cosmetics, spilling across to the window ledge, where they competed for space with two potted plants, neither of them in good shape. She lingered over the labels: skincare creams, mascaras, foundations, eye shadows, cleansers, hair gels and sprays. Why did she need all this; what did she hope to achieve? She was fifty-eight now and the collapse of her marriage had left her looking her age, which she privately attributed to a powerful and undermining feeling, the loss of security she had always assumed would be hers. She’d paid for it after all, in decades of running a house, holding down a job and looking after Catherine. All of which she’d agreed to do when she’d signed on the dotted line with the young and presentable Dr Weber who, everyone assured her, had a bright future. Fine, but whatever Weber had agreed to do in return he’d written off completely and there was nothing she could do about it.

  And she’d eaten too much since the divorce. Comfort eating, Catherine, I’m sure you understand. She did, though understanding and approving were not the same thing.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ Eleanor said as they sat down at the table, ‘to judge from your feet on the ceiling, you’ve been through my room. Another potato, or is that enough?’

  Catherine didn’t apologise; anyone else would have looked in too.

  ‘I noticed two used tea bags on your dressing table, Mother.’

  According to Eleanor, tea bags, carefully applied, were good for the eyes.

  ‘Reduces swelling, so they say. Cheaper than branded products.’

  ‘Money’s tight?’

  ‘Yes, but you needn’t be concerned; I have it covered.’

  Eleanor had a pension plan. In the ordinary course of events, it wouldn’t start paying out till she was sixty, but she had arranged to draw on it now.

  ‘It’s actuarially reduced, of course, but at least some money’s coming in every month. And the rent for this place isn’t bad – unfurnished, no central heating, rusty bath, worn carpets.’

  ‘But Mother, won’t that mean you’ll have less to live on when you’re older?’

  Eleanor looked up, a ladle full of stew poised over her plate.

  ‘I might not be here then, I am now. I have to eat.’

  ‘Unless you’re not telling me something, you’re perfectly healthy.’

  ‘A bit overweight, perhaps, a trifle plump.’

  ‘Anyway, is there anything I can do?’

  ‘A sure-fire anti-ageing cream, one which actually works?’

  Eleanor knew her daughter disapproved of cosmetics and assumed that she’d examined her collection in the bedroom. She also guessed that when Catherine looked at her tired, careworn face, she saw herself a few years down the line.

  ‘None of them work, Mother. You should know; you’ve tried them all.’

  So Eleanor changed tack. ‘Your father, have you heard from him lately?’

  ‘He keeps phoning, I keep telling him to fuck off.’

  ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘Probably not, but it gives me pleasure.’

  *

  Eleanor was meeting a friend in Lyme Regis the following morning; her daughter was welcome to come. But Catherine preferred to go for a walk along the beach, much better in winter when the winds blew and the place wasn’t overrun with tourists.

  ‘You’ll have to be careful, dear. I don’t know if you’ve heard. Storm Barbara.’

  Catherine hadn’t heard, but the forecast assured her that powerful though this incoming storm might be, it would affect the north of England a bit and Scotland a lot, and Scotland was so far north they had to expect such things. She, on the other hand, could hardly be farther south. And so she retired to a cold bed in a cold room.

  She didn’t know the legal definition of a beach, but if it included minimal sand and piles of rocks, Charmouth had one. The morning was grey, the beach windswept. She walked past a section of cliff where fossil hunters had been killed in a rock fall, and lightly dismissed their fate. They were going to die anyway, though until that day they hadn’t know when. But for the human habit of clearing up flesh and bone while leaving their trash behind, these people would, over time, have figured in the next layer of sediment.

  She sat on a boulder looking out to sea, the horizon invisible in low cloud. No species, however successful, lasted forever. Even the trilobites pegged out after three hundred and fifty million years, as did the ammonites which, in days gone by, had jetted their way through the waters off this coast. Though none of these creatures could think such thoughts, neither had they polluted the world they inhabited.

  The same fate, extinction, would surely befall human beings as it befell every species which had ever lived – but for the fact that humans could intervene at almost every level to protect themselves from the processes of the natural world and even from their own stupidity. And now some were planning to take their destructiveness to the stars. They would fail, of course, but would do untold damage here where they came from in the years they wasted trying. The human race had run its course; it had to be stopped.

  13

  Security never sleeps, even over a festive period when risk is increased by crowds gathering at markets to provide an easy target for deranged drivers who believe that there is only one road and that no else has the right to be on it. Dieter Klein, who never slept either, called a meeting at BND headquarters, where he was confident that even the CIA couldn’t overhear what was said. The days of trusting the Americans in such matters had died when it emerged that they’d spied on the Chancellor herself. Of all people! as Klein had remarked at the time.

  ‘So,’ he began, rotating his propelling pencil between index and forefinger, ‘let us begin by pulling it all together.’

  He was addressing his colleagues Ursula Lang, recent recruit Werner Vogt, and another gentleman none of them knew and Klein hadn’t bothered to introduce. Withholding knowledge is power.

  ‘So, Frau Lang, let us begin with the recent visito
rs to Catherine Cooper’s apartment; you now know who they were.’

  She did. Cindy Horváth was an Australian citizen resident in Budapest who eked out a living as a translator, mainly of technical manuals, into Hungarian. She was also to be seen explaining how to operate technology in YouTube videos, where she had a significant following, most of them male and who, to judge by their comments with special reference to her breasts, were more admirers of her body than her mind.

  Klein was averse to detail of this sort. ‘TMI.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘An English abbreviation meaning too much information.’

  ‘Well, thank you for that, Herr Klein.’

  ‘You’re welcome. The second visitor?’

  ‘Magnus Hjemdahl. A young man who works at the Ringhals nuclear plant, Sweden, as far as I can tell, on the decommissioning side.’

  ‘I can see no obvious connection between these people.’

  ‘Neither can I.’

  ‘And the wayward father, Dr Weber? No further communication, I take it?’

  ‘None.’

  The unidentified stranger spoke. ‘Actually…’

  ‘Mr Pearson?’

  The name confirmed Lang’s suspicion that he was from a foreign security service; no longer true, though he had been once.

  ‘Weber has left numerous messages and voicemails on his daughter’s phone. With one exception, she ignored them all.’

  ‘The one exception being?’

  Pearson glanced at his notes. ‘For the last time, Father dear, fuck off.’ He looked round the gathering and smiled. ‘In English.’

  How did Pearson know this? Lang could only assume that Klein had recruited him to do his dirty work so that he could say, with complete accuracy and no honesty at all, that he had not exceeded his authority. None of which concerned Klein, who hoped that Lang’s account of Cooper’s visitors was over. He had news of his own.